Fort Sill, Oklahoma, which was supposed to get two fire trucks got none, and neither did Kitzigen, Germany, or Headquarters,
U.S. Army, Panama.
The Walla Walla (Washington) Flying Service, which operated civilian models of the Sikorsky H- 19 in timber applications, received a purchase order from the Plans and
Requirements Division (Fiscal) of the Aviation Maintenance
Section, DCSLOG, to make such repairs as were necessary to restore H-19 50Ž3003 to minimum standards of flight safety.
The funds expended had been intended for fire engines and ground power generators.
Double Ought Three, the Big Bad Bird, was not what someone coming across its listing in the inventory of Aircraft, NonServiceable,
Awaiting Evaluation, would have envisioned. It had been restored to flyable condition and modified.
It had a new (actually rebuilt) engine, a new power train and rotor head, and new rotors. At Fort Hood, the fuselage had been modified.
The standard H- 19 has one cargo compartment door, on the right. The Big Bad Bird had another cut through the left fuselage wall. The interior of the passenger compartment had been strengthened, the seats were removed, and "stores racks" installed.
The landing wheel struts had been reinforced, and on each strut was a circular canister, holding three 3.5 inch rockets with explosive heads. The canister functioned very much like the cylinder of a revolver. As the canister revolved, the rocket was fired, just as a cartridge is fired in a revolver when its cylinder is aligned with the barrel. (There was, of course, no barrel on the Bird's rocket canisters.) A feed chute ran from each canister into the Bird's fuselage. The chute was connected to a bin.
The bin and the feed chute were filled with 3.5 inch rockets.
When the rocket launching device was activated (by a switch mounted on the pilot's control stick), an electric motor turned and an electric firing circuit was activated. The canister revolved
120 degrees, moving a 3.5 rocket into firing position, where it was fired. Then the canister revolved 120 degrees again, the empty cylinder picking up a 3.5 from the chute, and the chute picking up a 3.5 from the bin. There were a total of fifty-four 3.5s in the bins, the chutes, and the canisters, twenty seven on each strut. They could all be fired in fifteen seconds.
There was no tank known to military intelligence with armor strong enough to resist a direct hit from a 3.5 inch rocket during the "most efficient" phase of the rocket's flight. That is to say, when the target was from 50 to 350 yards from the point where the rocket had been launched. It took the rocket about 50 yards to get up to speed, and after 350 yards it began to lose speed.
But within the "most efficient" phase of itsflight envelope, the rocket would pass through the armor of any known tank like a drop of molten steel through a stick of butter. And then it would explode.
The testing that the Big Bad Bird was going through now had little to do with the practical military application for which it was intended. It was now preparing for what the Big Bad
Bird People, as they called themselves, had chosen to call its
"screen test."
Colonel Tim F. Brandon was not particularly amused by this attitude, but he had been around long enough to understand that troops in the field seldom (if ever) understood how important public relations was to the army as a whole. And he also understood that it was unlikely that no explanation would ever change the attitude of the troops. It was something he just had to live with, meanwhile doing the best job he was capable of.
And he was correctly convinced that he could do one hell of a good job.
The debut of "the Viper" (which is what Colonel Brandon had decided to call the Big Bad Bird) would take place early in the morning of 27 December 1958. All three television networks were sending camera crews, and there would be the army crew to make film available to other outlets. A special camera platform had been erected. Additionally, three remotecontrolled cameras had been set up in sandbag-protected emplacements along the route of the tank, so that the actual strike of the rockets on the tank could be filmed close up.
Colonel Tim F. Brandon, again correctly, considered the tanks proof positive that he knew just what the hell he was about.
Eleven Russian T34 tanks had come into American possession from various sources. They had been studied in great detail by armor and ordnance tactical and technical experts and then turned over to Fort Riley, Kansas (less one tank which went to the Ordnance Museum at Aberdeen Proving Ground and another which went to the George S. Patton Museum at Fort
Knox, Kentucky). Fort Riley had a unit trained in Soviet Army tactics, which was used in maneuvers. The availability of genuine
Red Army T34s lent an aura of authenticity to the maneuvers that could be accomplished in no other manner.
They had bellowed in outrage when the TWX came.
HO DEPT OF The ARMY WASH DC 17 DEC 59
COMMANDING GENERAL Fort RILEY KANSAS
TWX CONFIRMS TELECON CG PT RILEY AND VICE DSCOPS
0900 HRS 17 DEC 59:
CG Fr RILEY WILL IMMEDIATELY TAKE STEPS TO MOVE
ThREE (3) OPERATING T34 TANKS PRESENTLY ASSIGNED USA
MANEUVER GROUP PT RILEY TO USA AVIATION COMBAT
DEVELOPMENTS AGENCY PT RUCKER ALA. PRIORITY OF PT
RUCKER OPERATION REQUIRES TANKS ARRIVE IN OPERATING
CONDITION NOT LATER THAN 2400 HOURS 20 DEC 59.
CG Fort RILEY WILL ASSURE THAT SUFFICIENT REDUNDANT
PERSONNEL, EQUIPMENT. AND TRANSPORT EQUIPMENT ARE
INVOLVED TO ACCOMPLISH THE FOREGOING. D S C O P S Directs
THAT THE MOST REPEAT MOST SERVICEABLE OF
AVAILABLE T34S BE SENT TO Fort RUCKER.
BY COMMAND OF DCSOPS:
WALTER HAGEMEN. BRIG GEN. USA
When the convoy arrived from Riley, the crews of the T34s were somewhat ambivalent about what Colonel Tim F. Brandon was going to do with their T34s. On the one hand, they had nursed them along for several years now, a difficult task in which they took justifiable pride, and it seemed like a god damned shame to just blow the bastards away.
On the other hand, the T34s had been a real bitch to drive and maintain, and if the sonsotbitches were blown away, the army would have to come up with M46s or M48s for them.
Their jobs would be a hell of a lot easier. If you needed a track for an M48, you called up Chrysler. You didn't have to make the sonofabitch yourself.
It looked like it was going to be one hell of a show, too.
More than one of the crew sergeants, after seeing what was going on, rethought his decision that the WOC program was so much bullshit.
They were particularly impressed with Warrant Officer Junior
Grade William B. Franklin. Mr. Franklin told them he had just graduated from the WOC program and had been assigned to Aviation Combat Developments because of his service as an EM in Algeria.
Flying something like the Bird seemed to be a far more pleasant occupation than nursing a T34 or for that matter an
M48 through the mud. Lieutenant Greer, the Big Bad Bird pilot, was also an ex-EM who had gone to WOC school earlier on. They'd just laid a commission on him.
And in the back of all their minds was the thought that if the Bird did what it was alleged it could doŽblow away tanksŽthen it followed that the Russians would figure out how to do it, sooner or later, and they might one day find themselves sitting in an M48 with a Russian chopper ready to shoot a 3.5 up their ass.
And one of their number, a guy who had been in Korea in the early days, reported that he had run into his CO.
"I seen that 73rd Heavy Tank patch on his shoulder, and officer or not, I slapped his back, and it was an officer, all right. It was the god damned post commander. But he remembered me, so it was all right. Even remembered my name, and told me if I wanted to apply for the WOC program, he'd do what he could to help me.
"And I tell you who else I saw here. I'm sure it was him.
The Du
ke.' They called him that. Would you believe he was twenty-four years old when he made major? No shit. Twenty fucklng four years old. He ran Task Force Lowell, forty-eight
M48s and flock of half-tracks with multiple.50s on them, and just forget the flanks, fellas, through the gooks like shit through a goose. You see people like that around and you got to admit that everybody in aviation isn't a candy-ass who can't piss standing up. I'm getting a little sick of running around making like a fucking Russian anyhow. I'm thinking very seriously of giving this aviation a try. What have I got to lose?"
Colonel Tim F. Brandon believed in "practice makes perfect" nearly as devoutly as he believed in Murphy's Law.
In order that absolutely nothing could go wrong with the
events scheduled for 27 December 1958, he not only ran dry
runs, but dry runs of the dry runs.
He acquired control of two adjacent ranges, built as 105 cannon ranges in the 1 940s. One of the ranges would house the actual demonstration for the media. The other was the dry run range.
There was only one "Viper," and the colonel had no intention of running any risk of damaging the Viper that wasn't absolutely necessary. After it did its thing (destroyed a moving, absolutely legitimate, Red Army T34 with rocket fire), it would immediately land in Area "A," where it would serve as a backdrop for the announcement by General E. Z. Black of the army's latest accomplishment to guarantee the peace. Major
MacMillan would be there, wearing the Medal. Behind them, to show that the army was a youthful outfit which offered black youth an opportunity limited only by their ability, would be that colored warrant officer and Lieutenant Greer. Greer would actually fly the Viper during the demonstration, but it would be implied that MacMillan, the old soldier/hero figure had done so. Greer didn't look old enough to be the chief test pilot. It would look as lf the army didn't have the sense to put someone mature in charge of something as important as the Viper.
The Viper had been painted. The Viper now had fangs.
Colonel Brandon had gotten the idea from the P4Os flown by the American Volunteer Group in China before War II. Colonel
Brandon knew what the Big Bad Bird People thought about the Viper and the painted fangs. But he didn't even try to bring them around to his way of thinking. He had more important things to do with his time.
On Demonstration Day there would be no one in the moving, bona fide Russian T34, of course. The controls would be locked in place. The tank would be started across the range by one of the troops from Riley, who would then jump off to be picked up by a waiting jeep. He would then have ninety secondsŽ plenty of timeŽto get out of the way before the first rocket could possibly be fired.
In the dry run for the dry run, conducted on Alternate Range
B, a regular unarmed H-19B from the post fleet was used. The dry run for the dry run was primarily to come up with times for the scenario. Once they had the rough times, they would move to the Demonstration Range for several levels of dry runs, starting out with the regular H- 19B from the post fleet.
On 26 December came the dress rehearsal, which would be identical to the actual demonstration, except that there would be no one there but the participants. The Viper would be flown, and the T34 would be moving with its controls locked in place, and the Viper would fly by the camera platform close enough to permit the army cameramen to get a good shot of the fangs and the canisters, and then the Viper would destroy one of the
T34s.
The film of that event would be processed overnight in
Atlanta (an L-23 with a backup had been laid on for that purpose), and copies would be available to the networks the next
339 day immediately after the demonstration, in case something went wrong when they were filming the real thing.
There would be only one practice use of the Viper. Colonel
Tim F. Brandon felt that was a risk he was just going to have to take.
Col. Brandon was not all surprised when he saw the white painted H-I 3H of the post commander making an approach to the inflatable hangar. The Chief of Information had told him on the telephone that morning that he was personally going to call General Jiggs to make him aware of how important it was that everything go smoothly on 27 December, and thus insure
General Jiggs's wholehearted cooperation.
When he saw that the general was alone in the H- 1 3H,
Colonel Brandon had another thought: flying generals! That ought to be worth ninety seconds on the six o'clock news.
Maybe he could even get some mileage out of it during the demonstration. He decided he would put that on the back burner for a while, give himself some time to think about it. His next to-first thought now was that he should save it for a later day.
Colonel Brandon walked out to the H- 1 3H. Some of the
Big Bad Bird People had started to do the same thing, but when they saw him, they stopped.
General Jiggs put his cap on before he pushed open the plexiglass door in the H-13H's bubble. That would make a good shot, Colonel Brandon thought. That would be the first time the viewer would realize he wasn't looking at some ordinary captain or major. He'd see instead the two stars on the general's overseas hat.
Colonel Brandon saluted.
"Good afternoon, General," he said. "I'm Colonel Brandon."
"I was just talking about you," General Jiggs said.
"You were, sir?"
"Your boss just called me up," General Jiggs said, "to inquire if you were causing me any trouble. I told him that so far as I knew, you were behaving yourself and staying out of the way as much as possible."
Colonel Brandon didn't know how to take that. He said nothing.
"I understand Major Lowell is out here," General Jiggs said.
"Yes, sir," Colonel Brandon said. "He's working on the
Viper ordnance."
"The what ordnance?"
"I have tentative approval for Viper' as semiofficial, that is to say, popular nomenclature for the gunship, sir."
"Fascinating," General Jiggs said. "Is Lowell in that tent?"
"I'll get him, sir," Colonel Brandon said.
"I'll find him," General Jiggs said. When Colonel Brandon fell in step with him, he added: "I want to see him alone,
Colonel."
Major Lowell and Lieutenant Greer and Warrant Officers
Franklin and Cramer (fifty-five, gray-haired, and leather skinned, the old-model warrant officer) were doing something to the rocket launcher feed mechanism.
Mr. Cramer was the first to see the general approaching.
He nodded his head, calling attention to him, but did not call attention. The others kept working. Mr. Franklin looked a little nervous, as if he was wondering if it was his function as the junior officer to call attention.
"That's all right, gentlemen," General Jiggs said, dryly sarcastic, " stand at ease."
They stood up from bending over the rocket launcher feed mechanism.
"Hello, Dutch," he said to CWO (W4) Cramer. "Long time, no see."
"Nice to see you again, General," Cramer said.
"If you had come by the office, Dutch," the general said,
"my aides have orders to throw rocks only at certain people.
You're not on their list." He looked at Franklin, and then put out his hand to him.
"You're the one that went right from WOC to experienced expert, right?"
Frankiin looked very uncomfortable.
"You think this thing is going to work, Mr. Franklin?" the general pursued.
"Yes, sir. The problem the French had was aiming. Unless you re lucky, it takes three, four rounds to get on target..
"You walk the rockets?" the general interrupted.
"Yes, sir," Franklin said, visibly less nervous now that he was talking about something he knew. "And if you only have six in the canister..."
"What have we got here?" the general asked.
"Twenty-seven," Franklin said. "With luck, that gives you up to five g
ood runs."
General Jiggs nodded his comprehension.
"Where's MacMillan?" General Jiggs asked. "Also known as the Talking Head."'
"I thought you knew, sir," Lowell said. The general shook his head. "He and Phil Parker took my plane to get the Felters,"
Lowell said.
"The way Captain Parker phrased his request was to ask if
I minded if he picked up a little dual lime.' In my innocence,
W E B Griffin - BoW 03 - The Majors Page 39